


Just As Peaceful As Can Be

by Dillian



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: And He Helps Jane with her Problem, Apples of Idunn, Assisted Suicide, F/M, Jane Lives in Asgard, Loki is Locked Away for Hundreds of Years, She Has Problems with Being Immortal, Then Thor Releases Loki from Prison, Thor2 Didn't Happen, With Thor, semi-au, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 05:48:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dillian/pseuds/Dillian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor wants the people he loves close to him.  He doesn't understand that this is not always the best thing for them.</p>
<p>1,000 years after the events of <i>Thor1</i> and <i>Avengers</i>, we find Jane Foster married to Thor, and living with him in Asgard.  And Odin dies, and Thor ascends the throne.  He goes to the dungeons, and gives his brother the freedom their father denied him all those years.  And then things happen.  Because Loki and Jane become friends, and they get to talking...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just As Peaceful As Can Be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DaimeryanRei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaimeryanRei/gifts).



“Blown by a hundred winds, knocked down a hundred times  
Rescued and carried along. Beaten and half-dead and gone  
And it's only the pain that's keeping you sane  
And gives you a mind to travel on 

Oh the motion won't leave you, won't let you remain, don't worry  
It's a restless wind and a sleepless rain, don't worry  
'Cause under the ocean at the bottom of the sea  
You can't hear the storm, it's as peaceful as can be  
It's just the motion.”  
– Richard Thompson, “Just the Motion”

**_Thor_ , and all situations and characters thereof, belong strictly and solely to Marvel Comics. This is a fan-work, meant for enjoyment only, and not for any material profit.**

 

Papa Odin. Odin, the Allfather, who famously once said he'd as soon have a goat in Asgard as a mortal. He did finally reconcile to me. – Sort of. – At any rate, he realized he'd better accept me, if he wanted his beloved son Thor to stay. Odin... 

Then there's Frigga: She was the one who really made me feel welcome. She taught me about magic, and she was the one who used to bring me the golden apples we all have to eat every year, god or human, if we want to keep our immortality.

Bless, her, Frigga. I'll never forget the first time: She had the apples in a basket, and she gave me one of them. They're yellow apples, sort of like a Golden Delicious, but more fragrant, and sweeter. “Eat this,” she said. “I know it means a lot to my son, to have you remain here with him.” I ate then, I ate every year after that. Every year, one apple, given, first from Frigga's dear hands, and then directly by the gardener herself, after Mother Frigga entered Valhalla.

And it was Father Odin, and Mama Frigga, and Volstagg and his wife Hildegund (nicer than everyone gives her credit for, once you get to know her) and their children. ...And Fandral of course, and Hogun, who still visits from time to time, although he has not lived here since before I came to stay. And there was one other, a presence. We all knew he was there, but none of us ever talked about him. He was Thor's brother Loki, imprisoned before I came, for his crimes on Earth and in Asgard. 

He was... “Is”, I should say. One of the things you don't get used to, living among the gods, is _always_ speaking of _everyone_ in the present tense, going on and doing this, for the centuries on centuries that we all live, up here. ...One of the things you don't get used to, is _living_ for centuries on centuries. Down on Earth, Eric has been dust for over 900 years. Darcy is gone, and her children, and her children's children, for that matter. ...But I'm getting ahead of myself. The story I wanted to tell was about Thor's brother, and it begins perhaps 100 years ago, as I used to keep time on Earth.

100 years ago: That was when Thor's father Odin finally died. I say, “finally”. He never was really the same, after Frigga's passing. Something went out of him, a little of that fierce Odin spirit, that showed you how he'd managed to keep control of the Nine Realms all those years. After his wife passed, he was an old man, a broken old man, and he gave more and more of the duties of ruling to Thor.

And then he passed. It was intentional, I think. Idunn told me afterward, he hadn't eaten one of her apples, in all the years since we lost Frigga. That wouldn't have been enough to kill him of course, but then there was the sortie into Jotunheimr: Helblindi was throwing his weight around, making noises again, about coming and taking the Casket of Ancient Winters from the Treasure Vault. Thor could have handled it, but Odin insisted on going. And there was something about an Ice Monster, with a Touch as Freezing as a Thousand Snows. I never heard all the details. Odin threw himself into danger, that's how it looked to me. He'd finally found a way to rejoin Frigga, – There's nothing that makes your place in Valhalla sure like dying in honorable combat. – and he took it. I think I'd have done the same, in his situation.

And it was after that, that Thor came to the throne. There was a coronation (smaller, and less pretentious than the ones on Earth). After that, various people came and met with him, Heimdall (greyer than I remembered, from when I first came here, but just as observant), and Sif, and Fandral and Volstagg. After that...

Oh, I don't remember what happened after that. After that he _governed_. There are things you have to do, after a previous King dies. You've got to make sure your subjects feel safe under you, and that none of your old enemies are coming to take advantage. And after that...

Who was it that brought it up? Was it Fandral? Or Heimdall... Maybe it was him... No, as memory comes back, it was Sif: She was the one, on a beautiful, sunny afternoon, about a week after Thor's coronation. And the three of them were walking, in the rose garden still hallowed by Frigga's memory. And she said, “Have you told your brother the news?”

Thor's face: He is so _transparent_ , every emotion reflected on his face. He won't even be aware that he's feeling them, bless him, he thinks he never feels anything but anger and happiness, but there they'll be. And it was sadness, this time, a deep, deep, sadness and then, overlaying that, there came suspicion. “My brother.” He mouthed the words, his voice barely audible. “Loki Liesmith...”

And I saw Sif's face fall. “He grew up with you,” she said. “Odin was his father too... – His,” she went on, as I saw Thor's mouth open to protest, “albeit there was no blood-tie. – He deserves to know... Who told him when your mother died?”

_Who told him?_ Looking back, did _anyone_ tell him about Frigga's passing? Has anyone visited Loki, or even _mentioned_ him, since her passing. Lord knows, she mentioned him rarely enough (although she never stopped visiting him, using her skill of extra-dimensional travel).

And Thor's face went guilty. That expression of his, the one I used never to be able to resist, where he looks like a puppy, just swatted with a newspaper. And his voice, mumbling now: “He wouldn't care. Loki hated our father.” ...And the light I saw in his eyes that told me he was going from the garden, straight to the dungeons, and his brother's cell.

His brother, who tried to destroy him, the winter Eric and I were working in Gallup. ...Who came close to destroying New York, who drove Eric insane, and practically got Tony Stark killed... I went with Thor when he visited him. Down we went, down flight after flight of cobwebbed stairs, until we came to the dungeons, and to the wall of glass that are windows to the prison cells there. 

And I heard Thor mumbling: “This one... No, he was...” And finally, he stopped. “This should be... But where is my brother?”

And Sif and I looked and, through the glass, we saw an empty cell. And then Sif spoke: “You have forgotten the cell?”

And Thor shook his head. “It is a deception of my brother's.”

Loki... I had forgotten that he used to be called “Trickster.” 

And Sif spoke up again: “Best, at least, go in.”

Thor turned the key, and we went in, the floor of the empty cell echoing at our footsteps. I remember looking around: The room was completely bare, no carpeting, no furniture, no sign of any kind that anyone had ever been there. And then Thor spoke. “Loki,” he said, “show yourself.”

That was when the room transformed. Where there had been nothing, there was furniture, but not normal furniture, not like the furniture you would expect to see someone living with. This was... Well, if you've seen _Great Expectations_ you know what it looked like. Picture the room Mrs. Havisham had, the one no one went into, with the wreck of a cake, and the decorations from the wedding she never had. Now imagine all that had been there for a thousand years. It had been a thousand years by then, since I had come to Asgard. It had been more than that, since Loki was imprisoned, after his attack on New York.

And there, in one corner, amid the cobwebs and desolation, unnoticeable at first, because it was so still, a figure. There was a tall, blue figure, bent, sitting, with its head in its hands, and its elbows on its knees, sitting on the floor in a corner, against the furthest wall.

Loki. Sif's voice: “He was a Frost Giant, you know.” And, to Thor, “is he alive, do you think?”

My husband, answering: “The Jotnar are not so easily killed as this.” His hand, looking alien, unnatural, on a bony blue shoulder. “Loki. Come, brother, if this be deception...” He shook, Loki's body rocking with the force of his hand. “Speak to me, brother. ...To your King!”

And that blue head turned. A face looked in our direction, a face cadaverously thin, and blue, weirdly, unnaturally _blue_. And I was looking into the red eyes of Thor's brother, of the being who had once tried to kill him, so long ago. And that blue face smiled. “So you are King now at last, are you?” The words came out rusty, from vocal cords unused for a millennium. “How satisfying that must be, Thunderer.” And the blue head bowed. “You have come that I might pay homage?”

Sif's voice: “We came to bring news of your father's death.”

There was a faint, creaking laugh, from those same rusty vocal chords. “You waited long enough. Did you think I would not have heard?” Bony fingers waved in our direction. “Go now, I would return to my meditation.”

Thor was moved, I could see it in his face. “Meditation, brother?”

Loki's eyes caught my husband's. I couldn't see Thor's face, but I saw his, the look of bleakness, of despair, that was on it. “You call me 'brother', but I am not your brother. You do not care to have me for such and, thanks to your father's meddling, I am not fitted to live among my own people in Jotunheimr. Loki Liesmith is Loki the Homeless. He is Loki Who Has No Home, No Welcome, Anywhere. Pray allow me freedom to die at least, that I may find refuge in Hel.”

Loki Who Has No Home... After he said that, I was not surprised, when Thor took him out of his prison cell, and brought him to live with us in the palace. “It's not that I trust him...” Thus my husband, trying to justify himself (to himself, as none of us would have questioned). “I _don't_ trust him, but...”

But he could not stand that any should be homeless, in Asgard. _His_ home, a place of welcome for all, as it is of justice for all. He could never stand the thought that any should feel unwelcome here, least of all his brother (for Loki has always been brother, in Thor's mind). “Let me die,” Loki said and, “Oh brother,” said Thor, “speak not of dying,” and he took him out of the dungeon and, with his own hands, he put a robe on him, to cover his blue nakedness. Later on, you understand, the blue dissipated. Loki was as he is now, as he used to be a thousand years ago, when he used to think his Aesir disguise was his real appearance. Loki came to look as he looks now, and he came to behave almost like a normal resident of the palace again.

I say, _almost_ normal: Poor Loki will never be normal. He has been too long in the dark places, he has lived on loneliness alone, with no friends, and no contact from the outside world, since... Well, how long has it been since Frigga died? Some 500 years? It's been since then, she was the last person who cared enough to visit him. And she was the only one who spoke to him, and that means he was 500 years without hearing another's voice. It's no wonder some part of him became lost in the darkness.

But he's been a better guest than I would have expected. And so far I have yet to see the deviousness that Thor was worried about. Loki has been a perfect gentleman. He's been mostly with me. Thor has his governing, his friends have their combat. To tell the truth, it's been nice having Loki out here where I can talk to him. Life in Asgard can be a little... Well, I used to have Frigga to talk to. I had Thor... At least, I had him more, before he took the throne, than I do now. I don't think the Aesir _feel_ time the way we mortals do. Even with Idunn's apples, I think I still feel it differently, and every year still feels a year long to me, instead of passing like days, the way they do for the others. Loki has been good company, when things get a little slow.

I have Frigga's chamber now (I am _not_ going to talk about how sad it felt, when it was first given to me). The first day, I think it was a mistake, when Loki came in there. “A light...” His soft voice, boyish sounding. “Whose?”

He had his Aesir form again by then, and he came through the door, and with the light behind him, he looked so young! And he saw me, and I saw his face change. There was something like disappointment, then that went away, to be replaced by a mask of politeness. “Well met,” he said. “Well met, Your Highness.”

“ _Jane_ ,” I said. “Can't we be Jane and Loki? After all, what happened on Earth was so long ago, and you have paid the price.”

And he came in. – He didn't sit until I invited him, but I did that right away. – “Have I?” he said. “Odin's sentence was for life.”

There were servants behind me (there are _always_ servants behind me here). I signaled for them to bring refreshments. Not that I wanted them. I don't know that I even thought Loki did, but I wanted the privacy (even though I knew it would be brief). “Thor is not your father,” I said.

“No.” Loki looked down. His voice was like still water, cool and calm, with no meaning to it except the surface one; it wasn't until a long time later that we talked more deeply. “He isn't.”

That was it, that time. And the servants came back, and they brought fruit (not Idunn's apples, but others, equally sweet) and wine. And we talked about surface things on that visit, and when Loki left, I asked him to come again.

And after that, he did come, many times, and we talked about... And he shared what it used to feel like, when he was growing up, how he came to realize he was the only one of his kind, long before he knew of his Jotun heritage, how he found that there was a difference in how the Aesir related, to each other, and to him. And I shared...

He talked of his people, of his family, that he never knew, because of Odin's adoption, of his race, whose ways will always be alien to him, because he did not grow up with them. And I talked about...

And Loki shared his true form with me. After a while, he was always in Jotun form when he visited me, his blue face as familiar and natural to me as my own. “It's nice,” he used to say to me, “to have someplace where I do not have to wear a disguise.”

A year went by. Idunn came again, with her basket. She gave me, as she does every year, the apples that allow me to hide my true, mortal form. And Loki was there, when she came. And he looked, first at the fruit, and then at me. I thought I could see a sad look in his red eyes, but he didn't say anything.

And Idunn brought him his apple. “Your first,” she said, “in how long, Prince Loki? And yet you do not age.”

“My people are different from the Aesir,” he said. “We age differently.” 

And Idunn nodded, and she went away. And I looked at Loki, and he was looking at me. “The Aesir,” he said, “so quick to assume that all live exactly as they do, and my brother…”

_And Thor especially, he believes it more than any of the rest…_ The words lay between us, but neither of us said them aloud.

“Your brother loves you,” that’s what I said instead.

Loki nodded. “He does.” It was his cool voice again. Surface-talk. “He loves you as well.”

And I nodded. “That’s why he can’t… Why he will never…”

And Loki’s blue hand was on my wrist. “Don’t say it,” he said. “Don’t even think it.”

But it was too late, I had thought about it, and if I couldn’t say it to him, who could I say it to then? “Eric is dust,” I said. “Darcy is dust… All my friends… My _life_ is dust,” I said. “Have you seen what the earth looks like now? I should be…” That’s when I caught myself. It was too late, but I stopped.

And it was Loki who finished my thought: “We are of the past.”

“Yes,” I said, “but oh Loki, you know Thor will never admit it.”

Thor never will admit it. But we’d admitted it, both of us. There are things, where once you’ve said them, they can’t be unsaid. This was one of them. And Loki left, and I was still thinking about it, and after that, I kept on thinking about it.

And the next day, Loki came again. Thor was out with his friends, he was hunting bilgesnapes I think (or perhaps it was some other kind of animal they were hunting). I didn’t feel alone. I had Loki to talk to, and after so long, his blue face was the face of a friend.

He came in. I sent the servants for refreshments I didn’t want, asked the question that had been gnawing at me all night. “How long do you think it would take me to die, if I refused Idunn’s apples?”

Loki looked down. “You are the person of science, not I. What do you know of your physiology?”

The answer was right there. I hadn’t expected it to be, but it was. I guess I’d been thinking harder about this than I thought. “A day, probably,” I said. “Maybe two. Humans aren’t made for immortality.”

He put his hand on my wrist, looked at me with worried red eyes. “Think about my brother.”

But I pushed his hand away. The time for putting my husband first was gone. I’d already managed for so long… How did I manage to survive all those years, without thinking about my own needs? “He’s got you,” I said.

And Loki nodded, and when he spoke, it was in a very soft voice. “I suppose so.”

After that… Well that was a year ago. It was a year ago, that Idunn brought the apples the last time. I guess it probably felt like a day or two to my husband, him with his Aesir view of time. To me, it felt like a decade or more. I couldn’t stop thinking about Idunn. I couldn’t stop turning plans in my head, for how I would get her to leave before she saw me bite into the apple.

And I talked about it with Loki. And I told him, over and over, “This is the right thing to do.”

And over and over, he kept saying, “I suppose so, but oh Jane, think of my brother.”

And when Idunn came again, I’d gotten Loki to promise me something: She came, and once the apple was in my hands, he invited her to step out of the room for a moment. And I sent my servants away, and I took that apple, and I threw it out the window. And I watched it as it fell, and it was like I could see my soul flying away, and joining my Earth-family and my Earth-friends. _At last,_ I thought, and maybe I smiled a little, and then Loki came in again (with Idunn at his side, and a half-eaten apple in his hands), and I made my face blank.

That was yesterday, and I am growing older. I think I am about 70 now, and the average lifespan for a woman of my generation was only 83. I have sent Loki to fetch my husband. He’s only governing, he can spare the time to say good-bye to me. Finally I’m going home. I’ll be at peace, no more Asgard, no more immortality. Thank you, Loki, for showing me what I needed to do. I hope you can find your own peace someday too.


End file.
